While he had already
attracted attention and widespread praise for his scores for Big Wednesday
and The Blue
Lagoon,
there's no doubting which score it was which firmly announced the
arrival of Basil Poledouris in the upper echelons of film scorers -
John Milius's Conan
the Barbarian.
The film is utterly ludicrous, so the one thing that
audiences
were most likely to notice (apart from the emergence of someone
obviously destined for high office in the state of California) was the
music, which was a vital component in the film.

Poledouris
positively revelled when given the chance to write a grand,
old-fashioned score like this - it's full of the spirit of the Golden
Age masters such as Alfred Newman and, especially, Miklos Rozsa - an
overwhelmingly exciting, very long score which pretty much sustains the
film by itself. The two main themes are introduced in the
first
two tracks - the muscular theme for Conan himself in "Anvil of Crom"
(which features 24 French Horns!) is a propulsive, aggressive theme
perfect for the muscular hero; and then a more fluid, but no less
thrilling, theme appears in "Riddle of Steel" which goes on to be used
as a building block for much of the action music (of which there is no
shortage).

This
is one of those rare scores which not only works beautifully as a
whole, but where each piece is a self-contained gem in itself.
Poledouris was given an unusually-long period of time to
write
the score, and responded by providing the kind of genuine musical
quality which is possessed by only the very finest film scores (of
which this is undoubtedly one). Take a piece like "Wheel of
Pain", a fantastic piece of action music with a proper beginning,
middle and end.

For
all the wonderful action music, that's not all the score is about -
"Atlantean Sword" is full of a sense of honour and glory, a rousing and
inspirational piece. There's also a grand, sweeping love
theme
("Wifeing") which is gloriously over-the-top. "Mountain of
Power
Procession" is surely a tribute to Rozsa, very much recalling that
composer's Roman scores. One of the highlights is "The Orgy",
a
piece which builds and builds into a frenzy of orchestra and choir.
"Battle of the Mounds" might be the finest action piece, a
true
thrill-ride which again makes full use of both the large orchestra and
choir as Poledouris provides pulsating musical commentary to a scene
which is completely dull and lifeless in the film.

Conan the Barbarian
is a fantastic film score, and makes a fantastic album. The
only
slight criticism is with the Italian orchestra's performance, which
might politely be described as "enthusiastic", or impolitely as "bad",
but other than that you can't go wrong. Poledouris worked on
a
few more big fantasies in his career, but none afforded him the chance
to write a score quite this complex and yet so directly emotional.
It's beautifully-constructed, brilliant music.